The Numbers: Week September 8-14, 2024

I remember those Swatch watches! I think I have one, but it was a more mass produced model. I think I bought it from Costco. I stopped wearing watches (and wedding rings) during the pandemic.

My big sale from last week was a charity listing, so I didn’t really make anything from it. Weird though, eBay’s performance calculation messed up the sales numbers by adding it in twice. I think it meant to add and then subtract (since the money doesn’t go to me).

Anyway, a friend had two very old paintings on felt that was bought in the Ukraine over 100 years ago. They really weren’t worth that much, but my friend wanted to sell it with the money being donated to World Central Kitchen. I listed it right after Russia’s invasion, and we tried running it as an auction a few times with her advertising it somehow online. After that didn’t work, I just left it as a listing. The buyer’s name did sound Ukrainian, so the paintings found its person.

Otherwise, it is still quiet for me. I did do some scavenging, which I shouldn’t do since I need to pare down my inventory and open up a section of the basement. But, I got some good deals. Tons of garage sales this weekend, and I bid in a MaxSold auction.

Week of Sept 8 – 14
Total Items in Store: 1789 eBay, 41 Etsy
Items Sold: 10 eBay, 0 Etsy
Cost of Items Sold: $16 + $17.50 Commission + $150 for charity
Total Sales: $355.27 eBay (includes the $150 charity listing)
Highest Price Sold: eBay $150 for Antique Pair Ukrainian Folk Paintings on Felt
Average price: $35.53
Returns: 0
Money Spent on New Inventory This Week: $73.60
Number of items listed this week: 26

Items in Store: 3203
Items Sold: 50
Total Sales: $2,122.00
COGS: $249.00
Total Profit: $1,873.00
Average profit: $37.46
Average sales price: $42.44
New Listings: 85
Items scavenged: 200
2024 weekly new listings Avg: 41
2024 avg gross weekly sales $1,607.73
2024 Avg weekly Items Sold 35
2024 ASP $46.22
2024 projected total sales $83,601.95

It was a strange week. Wednesday was BONKERS! I sold 14 items for almost $1000. Then Thursday I had zero sales. Then the rest of the week I had spotty low dollar sales and low ball offers. It still evened out to be a great week and kept my 50+ item trend going so I’ll take it.

To make Thursday even worse, the $1000 Ralph Lauren Jacket buyer returned the jacket. Ouch! I got it back Saturday and all was good – no scams.

Yard sales were good this week. I bought….WAY too much!

At a church yard sale I broke my “don’t buy low dollar low STR items rule” by going all-in on a big lot of Scholastic Book & tapes. I asked if they would take 25 cents each if I took all of them. There ended up being 98. I plan to do lots for these as I have no interest in maximizing and selling individually – too low STR. They are all nicely stored in gallon zip lock baggies to keep them together – I’ll fill some 15x10x6 boxes with about 20 of them each to make 4 $100 lots.

At another sale I broke my “don’t buy big items right now” rule and bought a golf club set and a Casio Keyboard complete in box. When you see a set of Taylormade clubs in a Taylormade bag for $50, you buy them!  I’ve had great luck selling keyboards in the past – this is one of the desirable light up keys models that will sell for good money.

And the piece de resistance of my rule breaking weekend – I broke my “don’t buy commodity clothing right now you have enough!” rule by buying…233 items from a giant yard sale. It started when they had a table full of very nice vintage Men’s Ralph Lauren T shirts in 2XL. I’m talking one of every color in the same style. This is the same kind of stuff I was getting at the hoarder sale. I made a pile of the shirts I wanted ($1 each) and then went to the table full of mens pants/shorts. Same thing here – Ralph Lauren and one of every color in the same style – again $1 each. My intent was to lot this stuff up and sell stuff fast and keep ASP high. These items sell great in lots!

Then I went inside the garage – as the lady said – she hadn’t cleared her closets in 20 years! Sooo much stuff – all higher end mall or shopping center brands like Ralph Lauren, WhiteHouse BlackMarket, Talbots, lilly Pulitzer, etc. My wife also wanted to look as this was all in her size. Their prices were reasonable so I just started grabbing and chucking clothes on my pile. There were entire racks full of brand new clothes (they wanted $5 for the new stuff). Once I got it all home I let my wife pick out everything she wanted to try on. She ended up keeping 48 items and upgraded her whole wardrobe.

There was A LOT more than I bought, and there was even more that they hadn’t brought out yet. I have their contact info and they’ve said I can come do another private pick if I want to. I’m conflicted. The ASP on this stuff will end up in my normal wheelhouse of $25-35 as the resale of women’s fashion is just so bloated. This stuff would do REALLY good in high end lots though, so I honestly could just buy it all and sell in lots even to other resellers. BUT…I’m not going back. I’m going to deal with what I have and move on. This stuff just isn’t good enough like the premium hoarder stuff was even if my COGS is much lower.

My average purchase cost came out to $2.12 so I could afford to sell everything in lots of 10 items for $100 and be very profitable if I just want to get rid of it all quickly.

Premium Hoarder update:

Sold 8 items for $648.

I hit it hard this week getting the last clothing haul listed. I’m hoping to wrap up all the clothes this week and get them out of my van. Once they are listed….um….yeah… I’ll put them somewhere… eventually. So many high dollar sweaters! Hopefully they start selling.

Wow, thanks for linking that article Jay. Very interesting! I have to assume the buyer paid the equivalent of a house payment for that amount of cards and memorabilia — then again, the buyer pool which could handle a purchase of this size must be very small.

The examples given throughout the article are strange. Like the autographed baseballs in the beginning of the article? Stan Musial signed a ton of stuff before he died in 2013. A signed Musial ball sells for like $50. Maybe $100 if it’s authenticated?  Same for Bob Feller. Willie Mays is more…but there are a ton of Mays fakes out there, too.

As far as the cards go, I’m sure there are plenty of valuable cards in there but also thousands (millions, even) worth pennies. In those thousands of Jordan cards and Kobe cards and LeBron cards, there are certainly dozens of common base cards, or cards with dinged corners which would drop the resale value significantly.

There are boxes and boxes of cards that are the ones with uniform pieces, bat pieces, signed pieces, and we haven’t even gone through that,” Mr. Wieder said. “Some of that stuff could be worth a fortune. We don’t know.

I can say with confidence that most of the cards in those boxes are worth $10 or less. That’s just the reality of autographed cards and memorabilia cards over the last 30+ years. Most players do not have a long athletic career, so a generation after they’ve retired, their autographs are only worth a few bucks with exceptions for rare sets or cards with other unique features.

Some of the other items pictured and described are valuable and unique. But the picture of the collection as a whole looks like an insane hoard of 80s and 90s cards from the junk wax era. There is just no demand for the vast majority of those types of cards, and I don’t see that changing anytime soon.

The buyer says at the end of the article that he doesn’t even want to sell anything! He wants to do a traveling exhibit, which seems…incredibly unrealistic, for any number of reasons. Or maybe he’ll do a podcast? He rented an empty antique store just to store the whole collection. His “potential business partners” include the former head of ESPN, John Skipper.

This is the only internet presence I can find from the buyer’s card company, besides a Facebook page of the same name with 23 likes and a podcast interview from last year. If I had tens of thousands of dollars (millions?) to blow on a massive card collection, I probably wouldn’t fuss around selling on eBay either. But one of my goals was to make a website documenting my finds, it doesn’t cost that much to hire someone to make something better than a free WordPress site. No offense, WordPress!

I’ll be curious to see if this guy starts his own card company in the next couple years where you can buy mystery packs (with a small chance of pulling something valuable) from this “once in a lifetime” collection — these are called repack products, and (as you can probably guess) I am not a fan because they are mostly full of cards that no one really wants. That’s my working theory about what is going on here.

Maybe I’m just too cynical?

9/8/2024 to 9/14/2024

Total listings: 360 (up from 347 two weeks ago)

New listings this week: 39

Items sold: 33 — 18 via best offer, 8 via seller initiated offer, 17 via advertising

Gross sales: $1414.16 (down 20% from one year ago)

Net sales: $858.97 (down 19% from one year ago)

Average sales price: $42.85 (up 0.3% from one year ago)

I had sales in seven different categories this week. My most common is sports trading card lots 41% followed by trading card singles at 35%, but I am starting to see some consistency in getting a few items a week from other categories. Signed bats and jerseys are my most common, for now, but we’ll see how the next few months go. I’ve got plenty of cool stuff to list and have been organizing my time better. Love to see results from putting in the hard work!

insane hoard

“Quantity has a quality all its own.” (Josef Stalin)

Thanks for the link!

A really fun Pokémon trading card themed YouTube series I’ve been watching this week. It’s called “Should I open it or should I keep it sealed?”

Spoiler alert: should’ve kept it sealed

Seal packs of these cards are crazy stupid in price

Total Items in Store:
Items Sold: 7
Gross Sales: $660 (including eBay fees, shipping, and taxes)
Net Sales: $442 (minus eBay fees, shipping, and taxes)
Cost of Items Sold: $51
Highest Price Sold: $250 (dog art, thrifted for $14)
Average Price Sold: $94
Returns: 0
Money Spent on New Inventory This Week: $275+ (art at estate sale and flea, Anthro sale)
Number of items listed this week:  0

Grateful for the sales this week since I didn’t list.  I also grossed about $360 at the vintage market with a half size booth of mainly art.  My pop up seems to be morphing into vintage and used art only, as that is what the shoppers seem to respond to, rather than the decor items.  They also like tiny critters.

The pop up has been fun, but I need to really list on Ebay.  I’ve been doing way too much sourcing and other things and we straight up need the cash flow.

Oh boy, I had a real good interaction with a nutso eBay buyer today. I got a message from a buyer for an item I haven’t shipped yet  saying that they suspected my item was fake and wanted me to justify it. But they messaged me directly without any item title or number so I asked him what item it was. I was promptly told I was being rude and mouthy by asking which item they were talking about. I guess I’m expected to be psychic.
The threats of me selling counterfeit items and demands for refunds increased in frequency, while the buyers still never told me which item it was no matter how I explained why I didn’t know what the item was and that I couldn’t help them unless I did know what it was.

finally, I got to a computer and I looked through my sold unshipped items and found this buyers item. It was a pair of Cabelas duck boots… Yep, there’s definitely a hot market for counterfeit Cabelas merchandise. LOL!

I checked This person’s feedback left and they’ve left a bunch of weird nonsensical negative feedback to other sellers. I couldn’t refund and block this person fast enough and thankfully, I haven’t heard from them since.

AF looks up “Cabelas duck boots”, discovers they’re resistant to “multiple barnyard acids”, acquires new phrase for personal lexicon of insults.